Baidu Partners With Lenovo To Present Generative Artificial Intelligence Technology On Smartphones

JAKARTA - Baidu, a Beijing-based technology company, has partnered with Lenovo to showcase its generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology on its Lenovo smartphone. This is in its latest effort to explore practical applications for its AI model.

A Baidu spokesman stated that the partnership involved the use of his Ernie's big language model (LLM) by Lenovo, and was similar to the collaboration with Samsung and Honor announced last month.

Lenovo, who sells his own brand of mobile phones and also owns the Motorola phone brand, did not respond to requests for comment.

Sales of smartphones that offer generative AI features for services such as chatbots and real-time translations have become a new global trend after the technology became popular by the end of 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT.

Google is seen as a leader in an AI smartphone with its Pixel phones and powerful cloud-based AI power, while Apple is reportedly working to bring the AI model up to the iPhone.

Research company Canalys estimates that 5% of smartphones shipped globally by 2024, or 60 million devices, will become AI-capable smartphones.

However, AI services supported by US companies such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google are not available in China, thus leaving the market with Chinese companies. China's market now has more than 200 AI models on offer, including from Baidu's main rivals, Alibaba, and Tencent.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said in November that the company now needs to focus on developing practical applications. China's leading mobile phone brands including Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei are also working on AI models on their own devices but have not disclosed details.

Smartphone collaborations like this can not only help Baidu in this realm, but have its AI features that are strongly integrated within the smartphone can also provide exposure to companies for large amounts of data that can help Baidu's LLM pursue rival AI companies in the US.

Adjusting LLM on smartphones is the right moment to promote AI-based features, although it may be limited at this time. In the long term, they may become 'harvest'," said Ivan Lam, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint.